Mappa Mundi

Mappa mundi. On my back I
sleep without mountains, or oceans,
or broken continents drifting off
in search for more.
Birds turn origami and
I am left with an echo.

Somewhere between maple rain
and God’s sweet thumb I broke
the rules.
Sand has lost all reason.
Sun has lost its meaning.
Direction is meant for the breathing…
So is matter.

Mappa mundi. Inside
I am a universe. The eye of God, on my
back, giving birth to angels with
white wings of clouds.
Thunder claps in approval
while I whistle an old echo
to the vast dark matter

that prays for existence.

To Prove Something

The best part of the sun, where it melts away for its own reflection.
To prove something.

We stand in snake skin and
leopard print, digging for
bones of the extinct

while money blows up the noses
of our youth.

I thought about you today.
Your early reflection smoking
life into you,
black coffee lungs watching the sunrise bring life into
the rest of us.

My skin is hanging up now.
I am melting away for my reflection to do the same.
To prove something.

Sleep Walk

Sleep-walk

through a black body bag

toe’s tagged

he falls dirty like a dish rag

My love, his chalk

outline becomes my bed

he sleeps deep inside my lungs

I try to cough up his death

We exhale sharply together,

our silly little game

one of us a winner

the other in the grave

I am stuck with this raw, young body here

but he has taken my blood

my pulse is stiff against a man

yet I howl for the touch

For the moon’s milk

to puncture my skin

pray for my spirit

bring me to life again

Disease

If it was fire, I would be burned across my liver.
If it was water, I would be floating belly-up one hundred miles down stream.
If it was a daydream, I would have plummeted from the heaven’s and crushed by heavy streets below.

I’ve always known the thick romance of being lost, deep in black brain jungles, where tigers eat tigers to build their own stripes.

My birth brought it. It was my placenta. We were strong together and now I am separated from eternity.

My Mad Voyage

Were you, yourself, a stranger with no clear account of his dying?
An accident crowned that day.
A ticket arrived, golden and hollow,
at his bedside. 

He laughed.
He board a ship in the morning
that carried no heartbeat
or skin.

I think this is all we talk about.
A mad voyage where listeners were
not, until now.

And were we strange to his fable, with his legs up on the couch?
I should say to him, I am not.
There are two bodies I know,
inside and out.
I fasten their heads together in knots around my chest

on my own mad voyage that carries no heart,
or beat,
or spirit
that is strange to his hand on my shoulder, softly at rest from the world.

Cosmos

Lift my head from soft evil;
a black chest I know
to well,

arms that swing sharp blades around my throat.

We meet where day begins,
after black out thick ends…

smoke smothers from my pores –

I remember the Cosmos,
shooting up the stars,
crawling out of his damp position

and lift,
            lift,
                lifting off.

Janus

By doorways and walls, I pass through
with two faces. I am honoured
and assassinated by fruits and
seeds of the people.

They move their lips, I hear deep shrills.
They whisper like big cannons
at battle. I keep each as a sacred
stone; I throw each as a poisonous tale.

Today, God loves my motion. I merge with
Galileo under seven planets
I am his Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea.

But tomorrow will take me suspiciously.
Medusa will come to show
the bogus end of Venus and her beautiful phase.

White weasels come in pack, they smell her
insidiousness; she sits coy on my tongue
while I am categorized.

Back to square rooms, black chairs,
flat carpet,
doorways,
walls,
I pass through with two faces.
I am honoured by amber vials,
assassinated by the pills.

They move their lips,
I hear fuzziness and laughter…
quit laughing at me
quit laughing at me
I am a statue,
I am trapped here.

The End

Pink tissue shivers
– pins and needles –

poisonous seeds
grow like mushrooms

in stolen wombs.

Mozart marches
like I’m a
masterpiece

black and white
piano keys

I’m nothing less

than spoiled by
venomous seeds
that started me!

Whiskey Breath

First greet is at seams
that thread life to life.
She blossoms fresh blue,
nervous laughter sifts through

her eyes. Not me.
I am fog thick of red rage,
a fire smoldered by hard smoke hiatus,
stoned like rolling tonic waves.

She dips her fingers down my throat,
caressed by silence – she knows me at once.
I pour myself onto her.
I tell her how I know the moon,
how I sleep with it’s chill and
am never alone.

She tells me it’s habit, like her
laugh, that I’m addicted, I’m turning
to ashes. I say, “I don’t know if you’re a ghost of
me or I’m a ghost of you.”

She swings bright over Summer where
I plant my roots, under bed sheets
and claim the Earth as our own.
She was a kingdom,
I was in ruin.

I let loose my whiskey hot breath
on her air,
she strips bare of deliberation,
dripping thirst from her soft light
and we creak together in the shadows
of sensation.

And in the mix of time and transcendence,
frost grows over my eyelids.
I am blind.
Mouth froze,
then my insides.

She hammers at me for weeks,
heaving in heavy tumor.
She begs back for the comfort of the
roots we birthed together.

Life drops wet down my cheeks,
she drapes over me
for years,
Or is it me over her?
I wish….
I want….
The seasons have stopped.
I can’t find her blue through the fog.

Waiting For Death

Or calling her ripe name,
begging for skin to be twisted,

inch-by-inch,
I bribe her with my back
to the sun, my skin is enough,

too delicate for these loose brains
and fast nerves,
but trustworthy.

I whistle her black song through my veins.
I burn like tar, like tomorrow
might choke on sensation –

and push!!

She smells like wet dawn,
tastes like molasses. Deep in my throat she turns

over. Heaven is everywhere.